There are substantial advantages to providing a pedestal of some kind to permit a video or CRT console to be tilted and/or pivoted. It may be necessary to pivot the console from side-to-side to permit different operators to view it. It may be necessary to tilt the console forwardly and backwardly according to the height or eye level of the viewer, or to avoid undesired reflections or shadows from windows or lights. Similar advantages are desirable with respect to other consoles, such as disk drives, printers, general computer and office consoles, and the like.
A number of such devices have been proposed and developed. In general, they are of the type in which two separately connected axes are associated in a single structure. For example, one axis permits tilting forwardly and backwardly and another axis permits side-to-side pivoting. These devices, generally, are very expensive and have not been entirely satisfactory in part because of the difficulty in maintaining the position of the console, or because the devices would stick in a given position and be very difficult to move from that position.
Another approach has been to use the swivel ball, a ball secured in some kind of a socket or seat, which permitted both pivoting and tilting in all directions. Neither of these has been entirely satisfactory because the force required to move from one point to another was not always uniform, but depended upon the relative positions of the console at the beginning and end of its desired movement.
These and other defects are overcome by the present invention, in which movement from any desired position for either tilting, forwardly or backwardly, or pivoting side-to-side, or both, requires the same amount of force to be applied and the frictional force resisting movement is sufficient to maintain the console in whatever position is desired. The present invention also provides stops to limit the pivoting and tilting motion of the console to the desired range of movement.